Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a system and method for providing access to product information via a user interface of a computer device and, more particularly, to a method for browsing a product catalog.
Description of the Related Art
Product catalogs for some companies include an extensive listing of items. These product catalogs are now commonly being made available on-line. A user searching for an item in an electronic or on-line catalog may have a daunting number of pages to review before locating an item of interest. Searching for several items may take a considerable amount of time. One search tool that may be used to locate an item in a catalog is key word searching. However, key word searching may not be effective at locating the desired item or at presenting a limited number of pages to be reviewed. This is particularly the case if the user makes a poor choice of key words for the search or if the product description shares descriptor words with a large number of other products in the catalog. A keyword search may also result in returning a result with very many items, of which only a few or even none are the desired items.
A hardware catalog is an example of a on-line product catalog in which searching for a product may become time consuming. A user looking for a particular bolt, for instance, may input the search term “bolt.” However, that search form may retrieve a huge number of possible items that fit this description. This is the case because the search response returns bolts of many different lengths, many different thread configurations, many different head configurations, many different materials, and the like. Causing further frustrating to the user, the desired item may instead be classified in the catalog as a screw, another product description category including a large number of possible items. Similar issues may also arise when searching for other items in a sizeable catalog. Of course, catalogs for other types of items may include large numbers of products to review as well.